Begin at the End

Monday, July 24

Cyndi

I could hear the phone ringing from the living room. It wasn’t difficult since the trailer was tiny, and the bedroom at the end of the hall was a literal stone’s throw away. Mike was sleeping off a hangover, and I couldn’t help wincing when he finally picked up.

I’d been watching Netflix with the sound off, using the subtitles to try to avoid waking him. But whoever was on the line had other plans for my morning. The thud from the other end of the trailer was probably Mike throwing something and I shrank as if it had been at me.

Hurriedly I turned off the TV and rushed to the kitchen to try to look busy with something. Anything. He came raging into the room, wearing only his sweatpants. I unintentionally recoiled. Thankfully, he was too wound up to clock it.

“Fucking Lawrence and John both called in today. Josh says if I don’t go in, I’m out. I can’t even rest one fucking day!”

“Oh. When do you have to go in?” I asked him as I started a pot of coffee. A peace offering.

“I have to be there in forty minutes. Can you believe this shit?”

“That really sucks,” I said weakly. It was a fine line to walk between saying too much or too little. “Do you want me to make some eggs while you get dressed?”

“Trying to get rid of me already?”

“No! I just wanted to help.” The coffee pot had produced enough for a cup. Even though he hadn’t asked for it, I risked pouring him a cup and adding some sugar the way he likes it. “I made you some coffee.” As I held it out, he looked at it like I had just offered him a cup of poison.

He snatched it from my hand and slammed it into the sink behind me. Hot liquid splashed up and burned the back of my elbow.

“Did I ask for a fucking coffee? It’d be nice if you actually did something around here that helped.” It was his new favorite attack. Never mind that it was his idea to sell my car. He was the one who insisted I quit my job when driving two people to work was too much hassle. I would love to have a job, but he’d left me with no option and now blamed me for it.

As he tore out of the room to get showered and dressed, I turned to clean up the shattered cup in the sink. Despite having to deal with his rage, I couldn’t help being happy that this meant he’d be leaving today. I could almost kiss Josh for calling him in.

It was hard to believe that six months ago, I’d believed that this man was the answer to all of my prayers. Sure, even I thought it was a little weird when he started flirting with me while I waitressed at the Dairy Shack. He was twenty-two and I was a seventeen-year-old high school junior. But my heart fluttered when he turned those steel blue eyes on me.

He’d become my rock when the tensions at home reached a breaking point. Mom’s most recent loser boyfriend moved in and seemed to think he was getting a two-for-one deal. He wasn’t the first to come onto me. She had a history of choosing skeevy guys. Access to drugs being one of the top qualities she found appealing. A couple of them had been really bad.

I tried to talk to Mom about it first. But as usual I got nowhere. He hadn’t even touched me after all. Did I expect a man to not act like a man? So this time I’d turned to Mike. Instead of offering me a shoulder to cry on, he offered me a home. Even though I was still a minor, no one tried to stop me. Sure Mom called me a number of names, but at the end of the day she didn’t even raise a finger when I walked out the door.

Now, standing in this shitty living room with no phone, no car, and no friends, I finally understood that there was no such thing as a knight in shining armor. Men don’t save you for anything but themselves. They are the ones that lock you in the tower, not the ones that rescue you. And when they have you all to themselves, they hurt you. So, I was going to have to rescue myself. Well, I did have some help. If not for Donna, I don’t know how long I’d stay stuck here. Until he killed me maybe.

She’d first approached me after she’d seen Mike drag me from the truck by my hair. She tried to confront him then, standing in her doorway at the top of her ramp, one hand gripping her rail and the other on the handle of her bright pink cane. But he just told her to fuck off and I begged her to drop it because I was afraid that he would get angrier. I thought once we were alone and inside, I could calm him down. I was wrong about that. But Donna knew that. She came to talk to me later after Mike left to go drinking with his friends. I could tell she was in pain, but she still came to check on me. She took a cool washrag and wiped my blotchy tear-stained face comforting me in a way I remembered my grandmother doing before she passed away.

My own mother never showed me this type of affection, but I was grateful to have had Granny until I was twelve years old. My mom’s mother had no interest us. I heard her call my dad some racial slurs when I was only four or five. It was one of the few times I saw my mother defend us, and the last time I saw that grandmother. But my dad’s mother had shown me more love than anyone else in the world besides my father. Since I lost my him when I was in first grade, that connection meant everything in the world to me.

The day I first met Donna, as I held a bag of frozen peas to my swollen lip and a clump of my hair laying on the table, we began planning.

At first she wanted me to call the police and report him. But I’d been raised to avoid the police. Most people around here would as well. The best-case scenario would be they’d take me back to my mother. She’d be pissed if I’d brought the cops to her door or involved CPS, and there would always be some boyfriend.

It took some time, but one day Donna had an idea. She had a cousin who lived far out in the county to the south of here with her husband. Both her kids were grown and had moved out. In exchange for helping with the animals and gardening, they would allow me to live in an attic apartment above their garage. They would even make sure I had transportation to school in the fall unless I decided to do online school instead.

It sounded a little too good to be true and I was afraid to trust new people. But I didn’t think I could wait much longer. Mike was spending more and more time drunk or high, and in either of those states, he was the most unpredictable.

As I stood in the kitchen imagining my escape, Mike eventually returned. He was dressed in his gray overalls for work. His mood was still sour. I played a game I made up when I was a kid and didn’t want to be noticed when there was nowhere to hide. I called it Jurassic Park. Because I would just stand totally still like they did in the movie, hoping the t-rex wouldn’t notice them and would move on. It wasn’t perfect, but it seemed to work sometimes.

He poured a thermos of coffee with what remained in the pot without saying a word to me. Then he finally left, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the windows.

I stood in the dingy living room staring at the front door, eyes glistening with tears I refused to let spill. Frustrated with the whole situation, I managed to staunch the urge to cry. The anger remained. I embraced the anger. For so long I had let the tears win. But those days would be ending soon. I had a plan. I was getting out.

Still, I flinched when I heard the door of Mike’s old Silverado slam. I edged to the window next to the front door and peeked out as the tires of the rusty blue truck spit gravel against the side of the trailer then it reached the end of the trailer park drive and turned left, towards town, tires screeching as they hit the pavement. Finally I felt like I could breathe again.

I went to the bathroom to wash my face and calm my nerves. In the mirror I examined the fading bruises. My bottom lip was still swollen, but the scab was healing. This morning he hadn’t touched me, so there was nothing new at least. I had my natural hair pulled back into a tight bun. I hated it, but it was a simple defense I had started using after Mike had started ripping chunks out of my head.

My complexion was shades lighter than my dad’s rich brown skin. My hair matched his in color, though with looser curls. Aside from that, I had many of my mother’s features, like her green eyes and delicate nose. When I was little, I was proud to look so much like her because everyone said she was so pretty. But as I got older, I hated seeing any part of her in my face.

The plan was good. I just had to get rid of the thing growing inside of me first. Donna knew a group of women who helped women and girls in situations like mine. Someone would be here in a few days. Then there would be nothing to stop me from walking away from here forever. I touched my belly at the thought. I didn’t hate the thing. But keeping it wasn’t an option. If Mike found out I’d never really truly escape him.